


Final Journey On the Ground

by CWverse



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWverse/pseuds/CWverse
Summary: This is a Time-Travel fic(kinda!)Clarke is sent to Earth before The 100.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

The door slid open, and Clarke knew it was time to die.

Her eyes locked on the guard's boots, and she braced for the rush of fear, the flood of desperate panic. But as she rose up onto her elbow, peeling her shirt from the sweat-soaked cot, all she felt was relief.

She'd been transferred to a single after attacking a guard, but for Clarke, there was no such thing as solitary. She heard voices everywhere. They called to her from the corners of her dark cell. They filled the silence between her mind. It wasn't death she craved, but if that was the only way to silence the voices, then she was prepared to die.

Clarke had been Confined for treason, but the truth was far worse than anyone could've imagined. Even if by some miracle she was pardoned at her retrial, there'd be no real reprieve. Her memories were more oppressive than any cell walls.

The guard cleared his throat as he shifted his weight from side to side. "Prisoner number 319, please stand." He was younger than she'd expected, and his uniform hung loosely from his lanky frame, betraying his status as a recent recruit. A few months of military rations weren't enough to banish the specter of malnutrition that haunted the population of the Ark.

Clarke took a deep breath and rose to her feet.

"Hold out your hands," he said, pulling a pair of metal restraints from the pocket of his blue uniform. Clarke shuddered as his skin brushed against hers. She hadn't seen another person since they'd brought her to the new cell, let alone touched one.

"Are they too tight?" he asked, his brusque tone frayed by a note of sympathy that made Clarke's chest ache. It'd been so long since anyone but Raven—her former cellmate and her only friend in the world—had shown her compassion.

She shook her head.

"Just sit on the bed. The doctor's on her way."

"They're doing it here?" Clarke asked hoarsely, the words scraping against her throat. If a doctor was coming, that meant they were forgoing her retrial. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. According to Ark law, adults were executed immediately upon conviction, and minors were Confined until they turned eighteen and then given one final chance to make their case. But lately, people were being executed within hours of their retail for crimes that, a few years ago, would have been pardoned.

Still, it was hard to believe they'd actually do it in her cell. In a twisted way, she'd been looking forward to one final walk to the hospital where she'd spent so much time during her medical apprenticeship—on last chance to experience something familiar, if only the smell of disinfectant and the hum of the ventilation system—before she lost the ability to feel forever.

The guard spoke without meeting her eyes. "I need you to side down."

Clarke took a few short steps and perched stiffly on the edge of her narrow bed. Although she knew that solitary warped your perception of time, it was hard to believe she had been here—alone—for two years. The year she'd spent with Raven, who was over eighteen but too important to Float had felt like an eternity. But there was no other explanation. Today had to be her eighteenth birthday, and the only present waiting for Clarke was a syringe that would paralyze her muscles until her heart stopped beating. Afterward, her life-less body would be released into space, as was the custom for "delinquents" on the Ark.

A figure appeared in the door and a tall, slender man stepped into the cell. Although his shoulder-length gray hair partially obscured the pin on the collar of his lab coat, Clarke didn't need the insignia to recognize him as the Council's chief medial advisor. She'd spend the better part of the year before her Confinement shadowing Dr. Lahiri and couldn't count the number of hours she'd stood next to him during surgery. The other apprentices had envied Clarke's assignment and had complained of nepotism when they discovered that Dr. Lahiri was one of her father's friends. At least, he had been before her parents were executed.

"Hello, Clarke," he said pleasantly, as if he were greeting her in the hospital dining room instead of a detention cell. "How are you?"

"Better than I'll be in a few minutes, I imagine."

Dr. Lahiri used to smile at Clarke's dark humor, but this time he winced and turned to the guard. "Could you undo the cuffs and give us a moment, please."

The guard shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not supposed to leave her unattended."

"You can wait right outside the door," Dr. Lahiri said with exaggerated patience. "She's an unarmed seventeen-year-old. I think I'll be able to keep things under control."

The guard avoided Clarke's eyes as he removed the handcuffs. He gave Dr. Lahiri a curt nod as he stepped outside.

"You mean I'm an unarmed eighteen-year-old," Clarke said, forcing what she thought was a smile. "Or are you turning into one of those mad scientists who never knows what year it is?" Her father had been like that. he'd forget to program the circadian lights in their flat and end up going to work at 0400, too absorbed in his research to notice that the corridors were deserted.

"You're still seventeen, Clarke," Dr. Lahiri said in the calm, slow manner he usually reserved for patients waking up from surgery. "You've only been in solitary for a year."

"Then what are you doing here?" she asked, unable to quell the panic creeping into her voice. "The law says you have to wait until I'm eighteen."

"There's been a change of plans. That's all I'm authorized to say."

"So you're authorized to _execute_ me but not to talk to me?"

Clarke remembered watching Dr. Lahiri during her parent's trial. At the time, she'd read his grim face as an expression of his disapproval with the proceedings, but now she wasn't sure. He hadn't spoken up in their defense. No one had. He'd simply sat there mutely as the Council labeled her parents guilty. "What about my parents? Did you kill them, too?"

Dr. Lahiri closed his eyes, as if Clarke's words had transformed from sounds into something visible. Something grotesque. "I'm not here to kill you," he said quietly. He opened his eyes and then gestured to the stool at the foot of Clarke's bed. "May I?"

When Clarke didn't reply, Dr. Lahiri walked forward and sat down so he was facing her. "Can I see your arm, please?"

Clarke felt her chest tighten, and she forced herself to breathe. He was lying. It was cruel and twisted, but it'd all be over in a minute.

She extended her hand toward him. Dr. Lahiri reached into his coat pocket and produced a cloth that smelled of anti-septic. Clarke shivered as he swept it along the inside of her arm. "Don't worry. This isn't going to hurt."

Clarke closed her eyes.

She remembered the anguished look Wells had given her as the guards were escorting her out of the Council chambers. While the anger that had threatened to consume her during the trial had long since burned out, thinking about Wells sent a new wave pulsing through her body.

Her parents were dead, and it was all his fault.

Dr. Lahiri grasped her arm, his fingers searching for her vein. His grip tightened. This was it. _See you soon, Mom and Dad._ Clarke took a deep breath as she felt a prick on the inside of her wrist.

"There. You're all set."

Clarke's eyes snapped open. She looked down and saw a metal bracelet clasped to her arm. She ran her finger along it, wincing as what she felt like a dozen tiny needles pressed into her skin. "What is this?" she asked frantically, pulling away from the doctor.

"Just relax," he said with infuriating coolness. "It's a vital transponder. It will track your breathing and blood composition, and gather all sorts of useful information."

"Useful information for who?" Clarke asked, although she could already feel the shape of his answer in the growing mass of dread in her stomach.

"There've been some exciting developments," Dr. Lahiri said, sounding like a hollow imitation of Wells' father, Chancellor Jaha, making one of his Unity Day speeches. "You should be very proud. It's all because of your parents."

"My parents were executed for treason."

Dr. Lahiri gave her a disapproving look. A year ago, it would've made Clarke shrink with shame, but now she kept her gaze steady. "Don't ruin this, Clarke. You have a chance to do the right thing, to make up for your parents' appalling crime."

There was a dull crack as Clarke's fist made contact with the doctor's face, followed by a thud as his head slammed against the wall. Seconds later, the guard appeared and had Clarke's hands twisted behind her back. "Are you alright, sir?" he asked.

Dr. Lahiri sat up slowly, rubbing his jaw as he surveyed Clarke with a mixture of anger and surprise. "At least we know you'll be able to hold your own when you get down there."

"Get where?" Clarke grunted, trying to free herself from the guard's grip.

"We're following your father's advice. Searching for a way to keep the Ark's population alive. You're making history today, Clarke." The corners of his mouth twitched up into a smirk. "You're going to Earth."

Clarke glared at the doctor as her vision became blurry. The sedative she'd been injected with was putting her to sleep. _That'd make it easy to load me into a pod for this suicide mission,_ she thought as dark spots filled her vision.

* * *

Clarke blinked her eyes open. On a phone-sized screen in front of her, Chancellor Jaha was talking to her. _The Chancellor's aged._ That was Clarke's first thought. Although it had only been a year since she'd seen her parents' killer, the Chancellor looked years older. There were streaks of gray by his temples, and the lines around his eyes had deepened.

"You've been given an unprecedented opportunity to put the past behind you," the Chancellor was saying. "The mission on which you're about to embark is dangerous, but your bravery will be rewarded. If you succeed, your infractions will be forgiven, and you'll be able to start new lives on Earth."

Clarke barely suppressed a snort. The Chancellor had some nerve to stand there, spewing whatever bullshit helped him sleep at night.

"We'll be monitoring your progress very closely, in order to keep you safe," the Chancellor continued. He still held himself like a soldier, but his years on the Council had given him a politician's gloss. "No one on the Ark knows what you are about to do, but if you succeed, we will all owe you our lives. I know that you'll do your very best on behalf of yourselves, your families, everyone aboard this ship: the entire human race."

Clarke's heart sped up as the Chancellor finished his remarks. In a few moments she would be barreling through space toward a toxic planet, and she wouldn't be alone.

She tried to crane her neck, but she couldn't see any of the prisoner's faces. Her back was to them, and if the way her chair was positioned was any indicator, they had all be placed in a circle. _To keep us from seeing each other, but why?_ Clarke wondered.

Then, suddenly the main thrusters roared to life. It was really happening. For the first time in centuries, humans had left the Ark. She tried again to glance at the other passengers but all she managed to glimpse was someone's shoulder. They were all as quiet as here, a spontaneous moment of silence for the world they were leaving behind.

For twenty minutes, the dropship was filled with nervous silence. Clarke looked out the windows, which were now filling with hazy gray clouds. The dropship jerked suddenly, and she gasped.

The shaking increased, followed by a strange hum. Clarke's harness dug into her stomach as her body lurched from side-to-side, then up and down, then side-to-side again. She gagged as the smell of body gas filled the ship. Clarke squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stay calm. _Everything is fine. It'll all be over in a minute._

The hum became a piercing wail, punctuated by a sickening crush. Clarke opened her eyes and saw that the windows had cracked and were no longer full of gray.

They were full of flames.

Bits of white-hot metal began raining down on her. Clarke raised her arms to protect her head, but she could still feel the debris scorching her neck.

The dropship shook even harder, and with a roar, the retrorockets fired. There was a deafening crash followed by a thud that sent ripples of pain through every bone in her body.

As suddenly as it began, it was all over.

The cabin was dark and silent. Smoke billowed out of a whole where the control panel had been, and the air grew thick with the smell of melting metal, sweat, and blood.

Clarke winced as she wiggled her fingers and toes. It hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken. She unhooked her harness and rose shakily to her feet, holding onto the scorched seat for balance.

The other six passengers were still strapped in, and all of them were slumped over. Clarke stopped. Inside she was stopped and stricken with a white— flash of horror, a terror so intense that her breathing, her thinking, and nearly her heart had stopped.

They were all dead.

Clarke had seen dead people before. She was a medical apprentice after all. But this was different. They were dead, and she was the only person on the planet.

She was alone.

On a potentially lethally radioactive planet. She was alone.

* * *

Six hours after landing, Clarke had come to the conclusion that she was pretty much fucked.

That was her considered opinion.

_Fucked._

Six hours into what should have been her last day alive, and it was more of a nightmare than she ever thought it'd be.

_I don't even know who will see this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now._

Clarke stared down at the words she scribbled in the notebook she scavenged from the crew's belongings.

She then looked down at her naked wrist where the vital transponder Dr. Lahiri clasped on her should have been. It was gone, broken in the crash. To the Ark, her vitals would register the same as the rest of the crew they sent down.

Dead.

_For the record...I didn't die on Day 1. Certainly, the Council thought I did...and I can't blame them...not for that at least. And it's alright, probably. Because I'll surely die here. Just not on Day 1 when everyone thought I did._

Clarke looked at the bodies of the men and women who had died on Day 1. She had to bury them. Which meant going outside. But before she took that risk she had to leave the truth behind for _someone_ to find.

_The Ares program. Mankind reaching out to Earth to send people back to our planet for the very first time in over three hundred years and retake humanity's birthright...blah, blah, blah._

Clarke didn't care about that, but it had to be said. If the Ares crew had been able to do their jobs, they would have been welcomed back as heroes. The six of them would have gotten parades and fame and the love of the Ark.

_I wouldn't have gotten that._ Clarke thought, angry at Chancellor Jaha. She wasn't part of the crew. The Ares mission-plan sent with the crew made that very clear. The Ares crew wasn't made up of criminals, and Clarke was the crew's guinea pig.

Why waste the life of a scientist when they had a prisoner they could shove out into the world? See if her skin burned or her insides melted after being exposed to the radioactive atmosphere.

Clarke wasn't part of the crew. She would only be _"in command"_ if she was the only remaining person. _What do you know? I'm in command._ Clarke thought, before shoving that thought away. She didn't want to think about the dead crew stacked next in the airlock.

Instead, she wondered if her log would be recovered before her generation on the Ark died of old age? Would someone who she knew ever know that she hadn't been Floated? That instead she'd been sent to Earth to be experimented on?

_So that's my situation. I'm stranded on Earth. The radio was damaged in the crash and I have no way to communicate with the Ark. Everyone thinks I'm dead._

Clarke looked up from her notebook and around at the dropship she'd been sent down in. Most of it was filled with the crew's equipment, and what they'd need to survive until they could confirm whether or not the Earth was inhabitable.

_If the oxygenator breaks down. I'll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down. I'll die of thirst. If the ship breaches, I could be killed by radiation. If none of those things happen, I'll eventually run out of food and starve to death._

Clarke re-read the last line and then added another.

_So yeah. I'm fucked._


	2. Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's second day on Earth.

* * *

**DAY 2**

After a good night's, things didn't seem as hopeless as they did the day before. Clarke had _the_ dream again. Her dark-haired lover had swept into her dreams and chased away the voices.

With all of her sketches of the mysterious woman back on the Ark, Clarke used the first few hours of the morning drawing. She wanted to be able to see the girl whenever she wanted, not just in her dreams.

When she was done sketching, she got to work taking stock of the supplies the Ark had set down.

_Okay, this is my situation,_ Clarke started writing as she sat down. _The surface mission was supposed to be fourteen days. That means I've got enough food to feed six people for fourteen days. I'm just one girl, so it'll last me eighty-four days. And that's if I don't ration it._

Clarke planned to do that. Everyone had grown up rationing, and knowing that getting greedy was a good way to get Floated.

_I'm pretty flush on EVA suits too. Each crew member had a spacesuit: a flight spacesuit to wear during descent and the much bulkier and more robust EVA suit to wear when doing surface operations. All six suit's are in perfect condition despite the rough landing._

The inside of the ship wasn't in terrible shape. Clarke ran a full diagnostic on the oxygenator. Twice. It was perfect. If anything went wrong with it, there was a short-term spare she could use. But it was solely for emergency use while repairing the main one. The spare one didn't actually pull CO-2 apart and recapture oxygen. It just absorbed CO-2, the same way EVA suits do. It was intended to last five days before the filters were saturated, which meant thirty days for Clarke. (Just one person breathing, instead of six.)

The water reclaimer was working fine, too. The bad news was there was no backup. If it stopped working, she'd be drinking reserve water while she rigged up a primitive distillery to boil urine. Also, she'd lose half a liter of water per day to breathing until the humidity in the ship reached its maximum and water started condensing on every surface. Then she'd be licking the walls.

_So yeah. Food, water, shelter all taken care of. I'm going to need to start rationing food right now. Meals are pretty minimal already, but I think I can eat three-fourths portion per meal and still be all right. That should turn my eighty-four days of food into over a hundred._

_I've been thinking about how to survive this. It's not completely hopeless. There will have to be humans back on Earth at some point. The Ark is still dying up in space._

_So, right now my mission was to find a way to communicate with the Ark. If I can't manage that, find a way to survive until the next "testing" group is sent down._

_Of course, I don't have any plan for surviving past when I run out of food. But one thing at a time. For now, I'm well-fed and have a purpose: bury the crew._

Clarke set her pen down and closed the notebook that had become her mission-log. She picked up the helmet of her EVA suit and waited until she heard the pressure seal lock-in. Only then did she step into the airlock. Then she waited for that pressure seal to lock-in.

Now, she was standing with nothing but a single door between her and what was most likely a very painful death. Clarke glanced down at the bodies she had moved to the air-lock before she went to sleep.

All six of the crew had been stripped naked. She didn't want to do it, but she had to. Everything available had to be put towards her survival, including the crew's clothes.

Clarke sucked in a deep breath and opened the last barrier between her and the Earth.

For a moment, she was aware of only colors, not shapes. Stripes of blue, green, and brown so vibrant her brain couldn't process them. A gust of wind passed over her, making her skin tingle and flooding her nose with scents Clarke was somehow familiar with despite living her life on the Ark.

As far as she could see, there was nothing but trees. Hundreds of them, as if every tree on Earth had come to welcome her to the planet.

Clarke looked behind her at the bodies of the crew. Waiting to see if anything drastic happened. There was nothing. The bodies didn't burst into flames or boil or shrivel. It was like she hadn't opened the airlock at all.

That was kind of a good sign.

* * *

It took three EVA's for Clarke to bury the bodies of the crew—in shallow graves. The shovels that had been sent down with the crew were made for taking samples, not heavy digging. Her back was killing her!

_I need to start to ration my EVAs as well as food. CO-2 filters are not cleanable. Once they're saturated, they're done. The mission counted for a four-hour EVA per crew member per day. That may sound like a lot for one person, but I'm faced with spending years on Earth if I'm going to have any hope of rescue. No needless EVAs._

_That's if the atmosphere isn't breathable._

Clarke read over her last line again and again...and a final third time. That was what it boiled down to. She had to know if the Earth was habitable. If it wasn't she was going to die when she ran out of rations.

But if the Earth wasn't habitable, then she was going to die when she took her helmet off outside.

Clarke hovered her pen over the notebook. She was unsure if she wanted to write out her last thoughts. _If someone ever finds this, I want them to know everything,_ she decided and started writing.

_The Ark packed medical supplies for the crew. There's morphine for emergencies. And there's enough there for a lethal dose. I'm not going to slowly starve to death. If I get to that point, I'll take an easier way out._


End file.
